To date, the government’s attempts at trying to defend its decision to swap 25.2ha of land in the Mont’Kiara area in return for a RM628 million trade and convention centre to be built by the Naza Group, have been in vain and don’t seem to hold water.

The RM15 billion gross development value pegged on the land has created quite a stir and put the spotlight on all the parties involved, namely the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (Miti), Naza TTDI Sdn Bhd and Malaysian External Trade Development Corp (Matrade), for all the wrong reasons.

Minister Datuk Mustapa Mohamed was quoted as saying that “Matrade is in dire need of a large space for exhibition and expo purposes as it organises at least 10 such events in a year.” Just because Matrade organises exhibitions doesn’t mean it should own exhibition halls.

A bigger question is why Naza TTDI should be given the mandate and consequently benefit from ownership of a large tract of land in a prime area. Miti says the land is valued at around RM170 million but private valuers say the value is much more than that.

The deal lacks transparency, in that no open tender was called and how it came about remains opaque. After so much rhetoric that the government will adopt open tenders to get the best deals for itself, this land deal was done via direct negotiation.

Through an open bidding exercise, the government would have been  able to sell the land at a higher price. Now, wouldn’t that be good? After all, the government is running a big budget deficit that needs to be brought down urgently.

This article appeared in Corporate page of The Edge Malaysia, Issue 787, Dec 28, 2009 – Jan 10, 2010.